Balance of the Planet (1990)
Genres:Simulator
Themes:Educational
Story:Balance of the Planet is an environmental management simulation.
It is the successor to Balance of Power.
Chris Crawford seems to have a special liking for problems of global concern. Balance of Power dealt with politics in the cold war, its successor Balance of the Planet simulates nothing less than Earth's ecosystem. Although Maxis' Sim Earth is often credited as the first "ecosim", the title rightfully belongs to Crawford's game. Both games are equally interesting nevertheless, as they use two vastly different approaches to an enormously complex subject.
Sim Earth tries to simulate the natural processes, i.e. continental drift, weather, global temperature etc. as accurately as possible, and calculates the global impact from this basic conditions. Balance of the Planet breaks down the ecological system into 150 single factors, connected in a cause-and-effect network. Rather than experiencing the ecosystem as a whole, you discover a string of subjects that influence each other. For example, when dealing with global warming, you'd be referred to carbon dioxides and methane (the causes) and rising sea level (the result). By following and understanding the links, you may thus find out in which way beef production influences inundation. There is, however, no accurate simulation of a global ecology, rather than a sophisticated schematic of factors and problems.
Contrary to Sim Earth, you do not change the mechanisms of nature themselves. Instead, you're to try to influence society by funding and granting subsidies. If you raise the tax on coal considerably, coal burning and thus carbon dioxide output will be discouraged, but the strain on other forms of energy will increase. You'd be best advised to subsidise renewable energies -- which leaves less money for other pressing problems. Your job is to balance the ecology with the age-old system of reward and punishment. This has to be done in only nine turns; you are awarded or subtracted points, depending on your success.
Balance of the Planet is highly customisable. You may not only load "biased" games, in which you play with a certain prejudice (e.g. pro-nuclear), but also change all the formulas used for calculations to your liking.Show more
Vote to bring this game to GOG and help preserve it.13
Star Trek: The Next Generation - A Final UnityStar Trek: The Next Generation – A Final Unity is an adventure game by Spectrum HoloByte, based on the Star Trek universe. It puts the player in control of Captain Picard and his crew of the Enterprise D and features traditional point-and-click adventure gameplay as well as free-form space exploration, diplomatic encounters and tactical ship-to-ship combat.
The cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation reprise their roles, providing the voices of their respective characters.Science fiction 4X (explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate)
Harvest Moon: The Tale of Two TownsLong ago the towns of Bluebell and Konohana were friendly neighbors, joined together by a tunnel underneath the mountain that separates the towns. Eventually the towns started to disagree with each other on whose town had the best cooking cuisine. As the villagers became more obnoxious with each other, the Harvest Goddess became more annoyed with them. One day she finally put her foot down and collapsed the tunnel between the towns, cutting them off from each other. Now the only interaction the towns have with each other is at their cooking festival, where their cooking conflict continues four times per season.
As a new farmer, you are eager to start your new life at one of the towns but a freak travel accident makes you to forget what town you originally were going to live in! Listen to each mayor's story, hear about each town, and then decide where you want to start your new farm life.Sandbox
WRC 10: Deluxe EditionThe Deluxe Edition of WRC 10 includes:
- The base game
- The Mitsubishi Lancer Evo V and 1 additional historic event
- The Arena Panzerplatte super special stage (SSS)
- The Career Starter Pack
- Access to WRC+ for 3 months*Non-fiction
Grand Theft Auto IIIFeaturing a fully 3-D living city, a combination of narrative driven and non-linear gameplay and a completely open environment, Grand Theft Auto III represents a huge leap forward in interactive entertainment. For the first time, players are put at the heart of their very own gangster movie, and let loose in a fully-realised 3 dimensional city, in which anything can happen and probably will.
With a cast of hundreds, 50 plus vehicles, ranging from sports cars to ice cream trucks and from boats to buses, 3 hours of music, including opera, reggae, house, drum and bass, pop and disco, a huge array of street ready weapons and some of the seediest characters in video game history, Grand Theft Auto 3 is a sprawling epic which will show you that sometimes, crime can pay and sometimes it can pay you back. Available now for PlayStation®2, Xbox, PC and Macintosh.Open world Action Sandbox
Air Warrior IIIAIR WARRIOR III combines all the exciting missions of Air Warrior II with four new Pacific planes, 6 new campaigns over the Pacific Ocean and Europe, and heart-pounding, stomach-churning, accelerator-enabled 3-D graphics. With new, detailed landscape and aircraft art, and enhanced artificial intelligence, Air Warrior Ill is the ultimate dogfighting simulation game. Are you up for the challengeWarfare
Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - The Definitive EditionThree iconic cities, three epic stories.
Play the genre-defining classics of the original Grand Theft Auto Trilogy: Grand Theft Auto III, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas updated for a new generation, now with across-the-board enhancements including brilliant new lighting and environmental upgrades, with high-resolution textures, increased draw distances, Grand Theft Auto V-style controls and targeting, and much more, bringing these beloved worlds to life with all new levels of detail.Open world Action Sandbox Business
Cities: SkylinesCities: Skylines is a modern take on the classic city simulation genre. The game introduces new game play elements to realize the thrill and hardships of creating and maintaining a real city whilst expanding on some well-established tropes of the city building experience. From the makers of the Cities in Motion franchise, the game boasts a fully realized transport system. It also includes the ability to mod the game to suit your play style as a fine counter balance to the layered and challenging simulation. You're only limited by your imagination, so take control and reach for the sky!Sandbox Business
XBlaze Code: EmbryoXblaze Code: Embryo is a Japanese visual novel and the prequel to the fighting game series BlazBlue. The game is set 150 years before the events in BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger. The player assumes the role of Toya Kagari, a resident of Shin Yokozaki City and a sophomore at the prestigious Hakuou North Academy.Fantasy
Combat Medic: Special OpsYou are a new Special Forces Combat Medic and assigned to a Delta Forces unit. It is your job to save the lives of your fellow unit members during secret military operations in the Middle East.Action Educational
The Sims 4: Legacy EditionUnleash your imagination and create a unique world of Sims that's an expression of you! Explore and customize every detail from Sims to homes, and much more with The Sims 4. Life, and Sims, are yours to control. Customize your unique Sims, design their homes & take them on wild adventures through celebdom, romance, holidays and more.
The Sims 4: Legacy Edition provides long-term support for computers that rely on older technologies. It is available only to players who run The Sims 4 on non-Metal Macs or on 32-bit PCs.Fantasy Comedy Sandbox Romance